ESPN’s Jeff Passan could easily view Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal as his competition. Maybe he does. He has jokingly described Rosenthal scooping him on the Jhoan Durán trade as a “great emasculation,” after all.
But above all, Passan respects Rosenthal, and that respect was on full display during Passan’s Reddit AMA on Friday.
A user named Prestigious_Farmer87 asked Passan for his opinion on Rosenthal. Passan weighed in on Rosenthal’s unfortunate incident with Scott Paulus, the Milwaukee Brewers’ team photographer.
Shoutout to @Ken_Rosenthal for running over the camera man and then giving him a dirty look as he doesn’t offer to help him up pic.twitter.com/fDur9mSIYV
— The Brew Crew Scoop (@BrewCrewScoop) September 14, 2025
Last September, Rosenthal was interviewing Andrew Monasterio after he fueled Milwaukee’s 9-8 win over the St. Louis Cardinals. To avoid a Gatorade shower, Rosenthal backed into Paulus, knocking him over, and stared him down afterward. The clip went all sorts of viral.
Passan offered his nuanced perspective on Reddit, as excerpted below:
“Ken is great. He has been nothing but kind and helpful to me in the more than two decades that I’ve known him. There are reporters who are compromised, unethical, stupid. He is decidedly not one of them.
“This job can be really tricky. Fans are often convinced we have vendettas against the team for which they root. Sometimes we need to be critical and it is not well-received. More than anyone working today, Ken has weathered that. And having been in that position myself, I can tell you that navigating it is tough. Even when you’re convinced you’ve done so correctly, sometimes you just misread the room.
“When the incident with the photographer happened, I saw the reaction and was thankful it hadn’t happened to me. Because I imagine I’d have probably made a face, too. In-the-moment reactions can be so problematic, particularly when our faces can bely what we’re actually thinking or feeling. But that’s part of the job, right? For all the great things that come with writing and reporting ball, there are downsides.
“tl;dr: Ken is the guy that everyone who writes ball wants to be like, and whatever perception about him you may have, just know he’s a good human who deeply cares about his job and gives incredible effort to do it the right way.”
Shortly after it happened, Rosenthal spoke for himself on Fair Territory with Ken Rosenthal.
“I felt awful about what happened, and I apologized profusely.”@Ken_Rosenthal addresses accidentally knocking over Brewers team photographer, Scott Paulus, Saturday night. pic.twitter.com/Ssd9gBArjZ
— Foul Territory (@FoulTerritoryTV) September 15, 2025
“The ever-observant A.J. Pierzynski joked afterward that I looked like Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston,” Rosenthal said on the Sept. 14, 2025 episode. “Now, A.J., of course, is more experienced in these kinds of interactions than I am. I must admit, though, when I looked at the video, I was surprised at how upset I appeared. I was more confused than anything. Now, I had to continue the interview, we were live, folks, on national television. Couldn’t stop. That said, I felt awful about what happened.”
Rosenthal also relayed that he had “apologized profusely” to Paulus, with whom he had worked alongside many times before.
As the on-field reporter for MLB on Fox, Rosenthal likely has plenty more (and, hopefully, more positive) viral moments in his near future when the 2026 MLB playoffs begin next week.
About Megan Armstrong
Since first getting published as a student by the Kansas City Star in 2013, Megan Armstrong has gone wherever curiosity and stories have taken her, specializing in sports, media, music, and culture coverage. She also has an extensive background in interviewing and profiling public figures. Her work has appeared in Billboard, Boardroom, Bleacher Report, Esquire, GQ, GRAMMY.com, NYLON, Newsweek, Teen Vogue, The Hollywood Reporter, UPROXX, and elsewhere.